


Fading Mark

by Ink_stained_quills



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Sad Ending, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25040638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink_stained_quills/pseuds/Ink_stained_quills
Summary: Alisa awakens from the dream like someone emerging from a swamp: panicked, swiping at her skin as if she can rid herself of the night’s remnants.  Letting out a shaky breath, the girl tucks her knees up to her chest and presses, daring a peek at her arm.The music note is there, unfaded and perfect.  “Of course,”  Alisa murmurs to herself.  It’s not damaged.  It never is.[Alisa Swanson: sixteen year old city girl and ardent believer in soulmates.  Oliver Lax: sixteen year old markless boy.  When Alisa has to leave her city and friends behind, she also must confront a truth that's been building since the second grade.]
Relationships: Alisa Swanson/Oliver Lax
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Fading Mark

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for Zan. This wasn't something I'd have written on my own in ANY way, but uh... it was an experience. I figured somebody else might like it?

Your hair tickles your face, teasing loose from your ponytail. Casting a glance at your arm, you take comfort in the small music note imprinted on your skin, purple trails streaking behind the fading shape.

“Is that your soulmark?”

You don’t turn to the boy next to you, don’t look at his face - deja vu wraps around your heart and squeezes. You don’t smile. You don’t do anything but look at the sky. “It used to be.”

There’s so much blue.

Alisa awakens from the dream like someone emerging from a swamp: panicked, swiping at her skin as if she can rid herself of the night’s remnants. Letting out a shaky breath, the girl tucks her knees up to her chest and presses, daring a peek at her arm.

The music note is there, unfaded and perfect. “Of course,” Alisa murmurs to herself. It’s not damaged. It never is.

“Ali?”

“Hmm?”

Her mother nudges the door open with her hip. “You up? It’s a Saturday.”

“Ah - yeah,” Alisa replies, rubbing her forehead for a brief moment. “Sorry, what does that mean again?”

“It means,” her mother huffs, “that it’s the day you start community service.”

Rolling out of bed, she nods without thinking. “Why am I doing it today, though?”

“Because that’s the only day you could get slots with Mari?” Mrs. Swanson gave Alisa the kind of look that said only daughter of mine, don’t tell me you forgot already. Alisa flashed her one back that said only mother of mine, don’t tell me you forgot community service is a Sunday thing - like church.

Incoming Message from Dogooder lol  
What’s up best friendddd ready for volunteer work?!?

Outgoing Message from Alisa  
now do u understand my contact name for u

Incoming Message from Dogooder lol  
:’^

“Fine,” Alisa hums, yanking a tank top on. “What?”

Mrs. Swanson merely eyes the shirt and breezes down the hallway. “Nothing.”

She pulls a face at her mother, throws on shorts and quickly ties her hair up. “Liz’s dropping me off! I’ll be back later!”

“If you run into your soulmate -”

“- don’t have a Vegas wedding, I know!”

Incoming Message from Lizzy Bee  
here~

Grabbing an apple from the fridge, Alisa flings herself out the apartment door and down the building stairs.

Outgoing Message from Alisa  
k coming

“What,” Liz hisses, horrified, “are you wearing.”

Alisa stares down at her outfit. “... uh.”

“Pairing yellow and - actually, that bit kind of works, but I’m fixing your hair on the road.” Waving her into the car, Liz checks her bag. “Here, use this lipstick shade.”

“You’re not fixing my hair, you’re driving me!” Alisa takes the makeup and hastily dabs in on.

From the backseat is a third voice. “Multitask?”

Liz cranes her neck to look behind her and wrinkles her nose. “When did you get there?”

“I’ve been here for a while,” Yua replies easily. “Here, I have bagels…”

“I swear you’re a ghost,” Alisa shakes her head, releasing her hair from its ponytail. Yua passes the bagel bag forwards and changes seats, gaining access to Alisa’s hair, then starts weaving countless tiny braids.

Incoming Message from Dogooder lol  
Brace yourself, Li...

Outgoing Message from Alisa  
god what now

“I’m fairly certain you’re breaking the speed limit,” Yua remarks. Her long blond hair somehow finds its way into Alisa’s mouth, and she splutters.

In response, Liz increases her speed. “This is the city. If you can’t drive fast, get out of the lane!”

Incoming Messages from Dogooder lol  
Just  
You’ll see when you get here  
*sweats nervously*

Outgoing Messages from Alisa  
NO  
NO *sweats nervously* WHAT  
at least turn of read receipts, Ri

“What the heck,” Alisa mumbles aloud, then glances up. “Old - old lady, Elizabeth, brake -”

“On it!” Liz hits the brake with enough force that Alisa feels the car should’ve flipped, then remembers that Liz has the deposition, luck and prowess of an action hero. “Here you are.”

Rolling down the window, Alisa stares up at the building she’s due to volunteer at. “If I get killed, tell Mrs. Povsky I love her crepes.”

“Tell Mari we said hi!” Liz chirps, shoving her out the door.

Yua scowls. “I wasn’t done yet!”

Alisa ties off the last tiny braid and tucks them all into a ponytail, curly black-brown hair subdued for the time being. “Thanks for the lift. See you later?”

“If I’m not dead by then,” grumbles Yua, shooting a dirty look at the redhead in the driver’s seat.

Liz simply checks her mirror and retorts, “But you’re already a ghost!”. Without warning, the car lurches forward and into oncoming traffic. Alisa shakes her head.

“Li!” 

“What should I be concerned about?” Alisa cuts to the chase, whirling to face her best friend. Mari presses her thin lips together and shrugs in response before darting back into the building.

“Ah,” the boy standing behind her announces, “it’s Alisa.”

“Hello, Jared,” Alisa mutters through gritted teeth. “Committed enough felonies for this week?”

“Kicked enough small children for today?” Jared snipes back.

“Bickered enough this minute?” Mari says exasperatedly, looking between them. “Can you guys just not argue while we’re here, please.”

“Fine,” Jared agrees, and kisses Mari’s cheek. Alisa rolls her eyes but doesn’t comment, her only concession for her best friend’s idiot of a boyfriend. He marches on ahead, short brown hair looking especially stupid, and ducks into the soup kitchen.

Sighing, Mari links arms with Alisa. “I know you don’t like him.”

“Dating someone who isn’t your soulmate is a recipe for disaster, Mar. Especially when -”

“We’ve been down this road before, and I’m sure we’ll do it again… just not here, okay?” Mari looks at her pleadingly, and Alisa gives in with a noise of complaint.

“Now,” Alisa continues, “Where are we helping today?”

~~~

“Have a good time, guys?” Liz asks when they climb into her car, hours later, with unsteady limbs. 

“I hate Jared,” Alisa blurts compulsively. “So much. Mar, please, just once I’d like to throw him out a window.”

“To be fair, you splashed him with soapy water far earlier than he hit you with that potato.” Mari slumps against Yua in the back seat, rubbing her eyes.

“It’s a potato!” Alisa rants. “It hurts!”

“Your mom’s been trying to call you,” Yua points out, eyeing Alisa’s phone as another notification pops up.

“Really?” Alisa frowns and unlocks the device. “Oh. Really.”

“Yikes,” Liz leans into the passenger seat to eye the number of voicemails.

Sharply, the other occupants of the vehicle snap, “Eyes on the road!”

“Someday,” Yua mourns, “You will actually kill us. And when people come to our funerals -”

“In droves,” Mari adds.

“- the crowds of people will be saying nice things until they get to you. At which point I will rise from the dead and tell them how wrong they are.” Yua finishes, sprawling further in the backseat.

While her friends rightfully complain about Liz’s driving skills (and Liz denies the truth in their claims), Alisa listens to the voicemails. “Why do you ride with me if you’re just going to complain all the time?” Liz growls, waving a hand in the air.

“If you go,” Yua replies dramatically, “We all go.”

“Live fast die young,” Alisa chimes in absently.

Mari shrugs, eyes still closed. “I intend to use my powers of being the Mom Friend to fend off oncoming traffic.”

Rolling her eyes, Liz makes the turn onto Alisa’s street. “Glad to hear you have faith in me.”

“Don’t crash while I’m gone!” Alisa calls over her shoulder as she climbs out of the car.

“I’m going to drive into a tree out of spite!” Liz shouts back.

“Bye,” Mari and Yua chorus, looking less like sixteen year olds and more like unevolved blobs. As they leave, she can hear Mari coaxing Yua into wearing a seatbelt.

When Alisa reaches her apartment, she takes a moment to lean on the door. Then, tiredly, she fits her key into the lock and steps inside. “Hey!”

“Oh - Ali, you’re back!” Her mother smiles. “I guess you couldn’t answer my calls…”

“On Do Not Disturb mode while I was at the soup kitchen,” Alisa explains, and her mother’s mouth forms an oh of recognition.

“Well,” the older Swanson woman begins hesitantly, “Remember how we said moving was about fifty percent likely, in the beginning?”

“I do, yes.” Something in Alisa’s stomach twitches, sinks, and goes still.

Her mother smiles, mouth twisting ruefully in a way that means it’s not a happy expression. “And how that increased to eighty, a few months ago?”

“I think I know where this is going,” Alisa whispers. Her father had gotten several offers from companies paying big money. The money, however, was located several states away.

“Alisa… I just wanted to tell you now. So you could be involved in the process, have advance warning -” Mrs. Swanson runs a hand through her long black hair, the shade so similar to her daughter’s own. Alisa, it has been agreed, leans rather closer to her mother’s looks than her father’s.

“We’ve moved before,” Alisa shrugs, mostly convinced in the following statement. “We can do it again.”

“It sucks, though.” Her little brother points out from where he leans on the doorframe.

Alisa looks over at him. “Yeah. It kinda does.”

~~~

Moving, Alisa has decided, is terrible for several reasons. The first of which is that it stresses her brother out, who stresses her mother out, who stresses her out, and - well, hopefully you get the gist. The second reason is that she has to leave her friends, her city, her entire country, behind.

The third goes by the name Oliver Lax. 

The issue here isn’t leaving him behind, it’s reuniting with him, because her father and his mother somehow managed to live nearby and work at the same place. This means she sees all too much of him, considering she’s been trying to put him out of her mind for far longer than anyone sane would like.

Alisa isn’t sure how sane she is, but she’s almost certainly going to be less so by the time she makes it to college. She performs the perfunctory check to her soulmark to remind her that yes, he’s still out there, alive and unimpaired and providing a reason for her terrible dreams. She does the quick scan of the surrounding area for anyone around her age bearing the same mark.

Even though it’s incredibly unlikely. Even though she’s been told her soulmark will burn when they’re near. Even though she doesn’t even know how to interact with this boy she’s fated to be with (but it’ll work itself out, of course, because - well because it’ll have to) by a universe Alisa does not completely understand and likely never will.

They share a history, Alisa and Oliver, though neither like to dwell on it. It’s a time of seemingly eternal summers, of burning in more ways than one, of snapped sunglasses. (An all too passive way of describing it.)

“Alisa!”

Their shared history dashes toward her, beaming as her curls bounce. Though Alisa isn’t one for dyed hair, she has to admit McKayla pulls it off. The other girl has hair that she’s colored faint twists of orange and red, layered to look like a flickering fire. Just like her personality, Alisa thinks amusedly.

“Gosh, isn’t this crazy?” McKayla laughs. “You, me, and Ollie - it’s like second grade all over again!”

Let’s hope not, Alisa doesn’t say aloud. “A long time ago.”

McKayla makes a humming noise of agreement, eyes shadowing slightly as if trying to remember exactly what happened that year. Alisa knows she won’t, knows she’ll brush it off, knows the conversation will turn away from the past and towards the future.

Alisa also knows a part of her wishes for a confrontation no one will start. 

“Where is he, anyway?” Glancing around, McKayla purses her lips.

A shrug is offered in lieu of an answer. Alisa taps a finger on her watch, pushes back her hair, wonders absentmindedly if she can convince McKayla to leave for karaoke without Oliver, touches her watch again.

“Mick!” Ollie calls from behind them, and they swivel to face him. “Alisa. We ready?”

“We were ready about three years ago,” Alisa snarks.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” His smile lapses into something more apologetic, and Alisa can feel herself softening almost imperceptibly. “Really - I had work at the shelter.”

She leans forward. “You work at a shelter?”

“He’s become quite the activist!” McKayla informs her proudly, lifting a finger for emphasis. “Campaigning for animal rights, non-soulmark rights, educating people on ecological issues…”

“Ah,” Alisa’s aware that her smile is slanting from intrigued into strained, her memory sliding from the present into the past. “How are those going?”

Oliver’s smile is as tense as her own. “Well, considering people without soulmarks still don’t get treated like everyone else… not as good as I’d like it to be.”

“Sorry,” She tells him, and feels like she might finally mean it.

“Ollie,” Alisa murmurs, one day when everyone’s working on whatever projects second graders have to work on. “Where’s your soulmark?”

She knows that hers is on her arm, that McKayla’s is on her shoulder. She knows that her mother’s is on the back of her leg and that her father’s is on the palm of his hand, that her brother’s is on his cheek. She knows that her teacher and some other students in their class would prefer not to show theirs, and she respects that, because soulmarks are some of the most personal things in the world.

“I don’t have one,” Ollie whispers back.

Alisa stares at him, horrified. “How do you not have one? That’s - that’s how you know your soulmate! How’re you gonna - I dunno, get married?”

“Some people don’t wanna get married!” Ollie hisses back defiantly. 

“That’s okay, I guess… but do you not want to?” This, Alisa can wrap her head around. Her aunt didn’t want to get married, and her soulmate was okay with just being friends, so Alisa had just ended up with an uncle figure anyway.

“I’ll just marry somebody who isn’t my soulmate,” he decides.

“That’s stupid.” Alisa retorts. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Ollie stops coloring to look at her, grey eyes serious. “My momma and poppa aren’t soulmates. That’s why I don’t have a mark.”

“Well, that’s why marrying someone who isn’t your soulmate is a mistake,” Alisa tells him earnestly.

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore today.” Ollie mutters. Alisa watches at him for a moment after he looks away, then goes back to her hand turkey.

“Oh no,” Alisa whispers under her breath, then turns to hiss at McKayla. “I thought we were doing this under the condition that we could all sing?”

“Literally nowhere did the terms and conditions state that,” McKayla whispers easily back.

“Nobody reads the - this metaphor is getting out of hand.”

Both girls turn back to watching Oliver sing “My Heart Will Go On”. Whimpering slightly, Alisa slowly starts moving her hands up to cover her ears. McKayla slaps them down. After another minute (or hour, Alisa muses) the song ends.

“Give me your professional opinion,” he beams.

“Get us out of this,” Alisa whispers to McKayla without moving her mouth.

“There is nothing I’d rather do,” McKayla agrees, tired yet delighted in an exasperated way. “Ollie, love, you were aces. How about you come drink your slushie now?”

He complies easily, taking McKayla’s seat as the other girl selects a song. “Last Night” blares over the system, and Alisa presses her lips together to hide a grin. McKayla’s hair flies out as she focuses on the song, leaving Oliver and Alisa alone to - 

“How’ve you been?” Oliver - he’s not Ollie anymore, not to you - asks, stirring his slushie for reasons unknown.

“Ah.” Tucking her hair behind her ears, Alisa smiles wistfully. “Adapting.”

“Like a chameleon,” Oliver remarks. “Still as opinionated as ever?”

“Excuse me?”

As her face drops into incredulity, his shifts to something sharper. “Only sometimes in a good way.”

“If you’re asking about - you know I can’t,” she snaps quietly.

Oliver takes a sip of his drink. “Can’t and won’t are two very different things.”

“I have a soulmate,” Alisa whispers. “We aren’t meant to -”

“To care about something like love?” Oliver breaks into a smile, wrong and angular in all the ways a smile shouldn’t be. “Either you felt the same way, or you didn’t. Don’t.”

“It was second grade.”

“Alisa, we’ve seen each other over summers for years. It has never just been second grade.”

If he was any less honest, Alisa muses, it would be easy to shoot him down. To tell him that there was nothing, that she didn’t care and never had. To call McKayla over and use her as a buffer, like they’d been doing for years to varying extents.

She rubs her soulmark, and Oliver’s eyes follow the movement.

“Fine,” he relents, sitting back in his seat disbelievingly. “That’s really sad.”

“I don’t have to take this,” Alisa exhales.

She leaves.

No one stops her.

“Lis,” Ollie says, back when he was still Ollie and not Oliver Lax. Back when they were twelve and stupid and proper friends. “Let’s go swimming.”

“Okay,” Alisa agrees, back when she was still Lis and not Alisa. Back when they were twelve and cleverer than they are now and proper friends.

“Lis,” Ollie says at age thirteen, “Did you get that book from the library?”

“The question is, what book didn’t I get?” she replies. Handing him a novel, she points out a sticky note that’s been left from the previous owner.

“It was genuine and pleased but also something more, and there were not quite words for it,” Ollie quotes. “An interesting way of describing someone’s smile.”

“I like it,” Alisa decides. “Metaphors are interesting.”

“Only you,” Ollie says, shaking his head.

“Only me.”

“Lis,” Ollie says, fourteen and knowledgeable of human fallacy, “How do you think soulmate marks work?”

“The universe reaches out and picks your perfect person,” she tells him quietly. They’re in McKayla’s treehouse, waiting for her to come back with snacks. “And then you meet them eventually, and… you’ll know you were meant for each other.”

“Right,” he says skeptically. “The universe just knows, huh? And how’re you certain of all that? What if you have a soulmate that’s thousands for miles away?”

“I’ll find them.” Alisa stares at the treehouse roof. There are dust motes drifting pleasingly in a shaft of light, and she’s lying on her back to look at them.

Ollie rolls his eyes. “Maybe you won’t. Maybe it’s bunk.”

Her shoulders tense, and Alisa forces herself to flatten her shoulders to the floor. “Shut up.”

“What if I’m right, Lis?” Ollie presses. “What if we’re putting stock in something that isn’t -”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Oliver.”

“What?” Oliver asks as she rises from the ground. Alisa crosses to the exit and climbs down, away from confusing questions she doesn’t know the answers to. “Why - really?”

“Bye,” she responds pointedly.

When she’s fifteen and mad at the world and about a minute from combusting, Alisa has a dream. 

Your hair tickles your face, teasing loose from your ponytail. Casting a glance at your arm, you take comfort in the small music note imprinted on your skin, purple trails streaking behind the fading shape.

“Is that your soulmark?”

You don’t turn to the boy next to you, don’t look at his face - deja vu wraps around your heart and squeezes. You don’t smile. You don’t do anything but look at the sky. “It used to be.”

There’s so much blue.

The dream doesn’t leave her alone for - well. It hasn’t left yet.

Alisa at sixteen is struggling to ignore something she’s known for years, and denied for longer than that. Her skin feels hot, her brain overflowing, her heart… her heart hasn’t stopped, or grown cold, because that doesn’t really happen, but.

“I think I have a fever,” Alisa mutters aloud.

“It’s really hot out,” the boy next to her agrees. “I mean - ow, did I touch something metal?”

She turns to the side and eyes him, gaze dropping down to the hand he’s shaking. Printed over his fingers is a music note with purple streaks.

“Hi,” she stutters, stomach sinking. “I think you’re my -” 

“I’m you’re?” He smiles encouragingly, and his eyes trail to her arm. “Oh. I guess I am.”

Pressing his hand to her arm, mark to mark, Alisa feels the fire drain out of her. “I’m Alisa.”

“Noah,” the boy offers. “Nice to meet you, soulmate.”

She wishes it was.

This time, when she dreams, the mark is gone completely.

“So this is the acclaimed Noah, soulmate to Alisa!” McKayla chirps, arm linked in Alisa’s. “So nice to meet you~”

“You must be McKayla,” Noah smiles with just the right level of politeness. “I’ve heard great things, ha.”

“Hey,” Oliver nods at him.

“Oliver, yeah?” Noah sticks out his hand to shake, and Alisa internally winces. “‘Sup?”

This is ridiculous, Alisa thinks to herself. She’s in love with a boy that doesn’t have any mark, let alone one to match hers, and her soulmate is literally right next to her. Her perfect match, her universe appointed other half.

The worst part is that she thinks she could love Noah, someday.

“Nothing much,” Oliver smiles, and it isn’t genuine and pleased but it is something more, and there were not quite words for it.

**Author's Note:**

> She wanted Ollie to die, but I figured Alisa not overcoming her preconceived ideas about soulmates was sadder


End file.
